


Nightmare

by Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Experimental, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Medical Trauma, Other, Psychological Horror, Resonance, non-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 04:53:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker/pseuds/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker
Summary: written version of a lucid dream I had last night.





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> character is 18+ using a vulnerable perspective

The boy slips through the tall, metal door before it can close in his face. He’s not supposed to be here for long, at this conference where Garlemald’s scientific elite have come to witness the latest innovation in unethical biochemistry. They call it Resonance, and it’s all hush-hush with the higher-ups who know their interests will see them outcast from polite company. Yet here they are among like minds, sitting in rows before a stage with the Garlean flag projected onto a screen.

He’s here for his own curiosity, yet finding a way into the building has taken him the better half of an hour what with how many locked doors and surly guards he’s found. Still, he breathes a sigh of relief as he zeroes in on the head speaker, a tall pureblooded male addressing the gathered crowd with fervent enthusiasm. Whatever he’s saying can’t be heard, throwing a wrench into the boy’s plans to whip out his little recording device and gather all the sweet, forbidden details he’s been yearning to know. The device is a mere pen stuffed with technologies he doesn’t pretend to understand, wired to a battery pack the size of a standard novel. He checks that it’s still in his back pocket and takes a step forth, only to take stock of his immediate surroundings.

There are people here, but he can barely tell. They’re all dressed alike, grey gowns leaving any distinguishing features to the imagination. When he looks up at their faces he can’t see a single one – even of those who are turned towards him, they are not featureless but _formless_. He furrows his brows. No matter how hard he squints, none of these people have faces. They don’t move, hunched and still and silent.

 _‘What’s… going on here?’_ He doesn’t see the one-way glass separating the crowd here from the crowd there, and doesn’t have the chance to bump into it for a sudden pain shoots through his head, directly from his third eye. He clutches at his forehead with a grimace, turning so slowly it’s like pulling his head through tar. _Cold_ tar, chilling its way down his nervous system until his thighs quiver and his back aches. He vaguely registers a man in his peripheral vision pointing something at him, then taking a purposeful stride over to him with a handful of words in his mouth.

“You’ll do.” His lips don’t move. “The Empire thanks you for your service.” Then there is a _shove_ and the boy hits the floor, still wholly aware of his surroundings that now include a raised trolley of sorts just six ilms off the ground. He cries out softly, confusion stirring his instincts to _run_ but he can’t, feet dragging along the carpeted floor as the trolley slides along a silver track away from the crowd and through a window of black rubber flaps.

Energy. It hums around him the second he’s through, wide-open eyes seeing naught but pitch darkness. The slow whir of the trolley moving (it has no wheels, it’s mounted to something) accompanies his scrambling legs, wrists already captured within some sort of magnetic field that leaves him partially spread with his face down. He tries to move, to wrench his hands out of their leaden prison that _isn’t even touching him_ and feels only exhaustion seep through his limbs.

“Feet on the table, please.” A male voice croons to him from somewhere he can’t sense – close, but unreachable. “Makes the energy distribution a lot less painful.”

 _Energy distribution?_ He’d only heard rumors of how these Resonants were made, but –

“Wait!” He cries out and squirms as best he can. “I’ve got a battery in my pocket!” The only thing that comes to mind is an explosion caving out his insides and _by the Emperor, **no**. _

“I’m surprised you got it this far.” The voice chuckles, dark mirth in every word. “Better get rid of it, hm? Wouldn’t want to interfere with things.”

The boy wants to say something. Protest, wail, anything. But his body moves of its own accord, right hand wrenching itself from the magnetic field and discarding the bulky object from his back pocket. It clatters to the ground along with his recording device, and someone in the room clicks their tongue. Then, the man speaks again.

“Feet on the table.” But it’s too late, and the trolley stops with a jolt that plasters the boy’s face to its cold metal surface. His legs shudder with what last remaining strength they have and all of a sudden electricity crackles to life around his bound wrists. Huge balls of lightning sear his eyesight to nothingness and he squeezes shut every sensory avenue he can. He doesn’t realize he’s convulsing until his elbows knock against the trolley over and over again, body twitching helplessly.

“I really would put those feet of yours in the containment fields.” The voice addresses him with a hint of amusement. “The infusion won’t spread properly otherwise. Soon you won’t be able to move.”

He tries. He tries so hard. And only by virtue of a well-timed spasm do his ankles slip into the fields, pulled to the trolley and swallowed by two more crackling orbs. He doesn’t want to die. The electricity consuming his upper body races to meet his lower half and there’s a moment of peace, a mere half second before they join. And then it surges. He screams, thrashing in white-hot agony the likes of which only heightens at an exponential rate. Striated lines trickle from his nerve endings in black and blue, clusters dying faster than they can repair. Only when he loses consciousness does it cease, merciful, unfeeling bliss.

 

Zenos’s eyes snap open. That accursed dream again, and it still feels as real as every other pain he’s endured for the Empire’s sake. He stares at the ceiling, just a hint above pitch from the light seeping through his bedroom curtains. His body aches, leaden and worn like he’s been thrashing in his sleep. For all he knows he might as well have, as the silken sheets are all twisted with threads sticking out from freshly clawed holes in the fabric.

He tries to tell himself it’s not real. But when he brushes the pads of his fingers along his biceps and chest, the white patches keeping slow-release chemicals in his body say otherwise. He doesn’t understand his dreams – of places he’s never been, voices he’s never heard. They never have faces, and Zenos _always_ remembers a face. His father. His mother. The man with the needle. The woman with the tomestone. Each and every servant of the Palace who can’t make eye contact with him for more than a few seconds. He sees all.

He knows nothing.


End file.
